One of the All-Time great Crime Dramas in Television History!
The Streets of San Francisco ran on ABC from 1972-1977.
It starred Academy Award winning Actor Karl Malden as Det. Lt. Mike Stone, and future Academy Award winner Michael Douglas as his partner, Inspector Steve Keller.
Karl Malden was a highly respected film actor. He won the 1951 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the Marlon Brando classic “A Streetcar named Desire“.
The show was nominated for 16 Emmy Awards during its run, but never won.
Michael Douglas was a little-known actor, better known as the son of veteran Hollywood Actor Kirk Douglas, when he started on the show.
Michael Douglas left The Streets of San Francisco after 2 episodes of the 5th and final season in order to pursue a film career.
He won an Academy Award for producing the 1975 Jack Nicholson classic “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest“, a film that he produced while still starring on The Streets of San Francisco.
When Douglas left the show, he was replaced by a new detective, Inspector Dan Robbins, played by Richard Hatch.
The show was cancelled after the 5th season in 1977 due to poor ratings. The partnership of Malden and Douglas was hugely popular with fans and viewers did not respond well to Hatch’s character.
Richard Hatch then went on to star in “Battlestar Galactica“. (The original version)
The show was shot entirely on location in San Francisco and featured an impressive roster of guest-stars including Leslie Nielsen, Nick Nolte, John Ritter, Tom Selleck, Larry Hagman, a Pre-Star Wars Mark Hamill, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of his first acting roles.
I remember watching the show with my parents when we lived in West Germany in the mid 1970′s. The show was dubbed into German and we understood nothing of what was being said, but we still watched faithfully every week.
Karl Malden appeared in a 1992 Made-for-Television film, “Back to the Streets of San Francisco” in which Mike Stone has to investigate the murder of his former partner, Steve Keller.
I was fortunate enough to get Karl Malden’s autograph as part of my autograph hobby, in fact his was the very first autograph I ever requested.
Karl Malden died in 2009 at the age of 97.
Michael Douglas went on to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1988 film “Wall Street“.
As of 2008, CBS, which now owns the rights to the show, was thinking of producing a remake of the series.
